Smart Soapmaking: The Simple Guide to Making Soap Quickly, Safely, and Reliably, or How to Make Soap That's Perfect for You, Your Family, or Friends: Smart Soap Making, #1

By Anne L. Watson

SPECIAL NOTE! -- ANNE WILL PERSONALLY ANSWER ANY QUESTION OF YOURS AFTER READING THIS BOOK. ASK ON HER WEB SITE, AND YOU'LL NORMALLY HEAR BACK WITHIN HOURS!
 
Maybe you'd like to make your own soap, but you're worried that working with lye is too difficult or dangerous. Maybe you're scared off by "beginner" books that go on for hundreds of pages and leave you less confident than before. Or maybe you're already making soap, but you wonder if methods you've learned are slower and more complicated than they need to be. 
 
Whether beginner or advanced, you'll find "Smart Soapmaking" practical, helpful, and refreshing. Written by a former professional soapmaker, it explodes the myths about soapmaking and shows you how to make wonderful soap from scratch with the least fuss and bother. 
 
You'll get a wide variety of recipes, plus you'll learn how to modify them and create new ones. Want to make a luxurious gift soap? Or one that's all natural, with no artificial ingredients? Maybe a moisturizing soap for dry skin? Or one with a trending oil not yet in books? With "Smart Soapmaking," you can do all that and more, to get exactly the soap you want.
 
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Anne L. Watson is the first author to have introduced modern techniques of home soapmaking and lotionmaking to book readers. She has made soap under the company name Soap Tree, and before her retirement from professional life, she was a historic preservation architecture consultant. Anne and her husband, Aaron Shepard, live in Bellingham, Washington.
 
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******RECOMMENDED BY THE HANDCRAFTED SOAP & COSMETIC GUILD******
 
"The only book [you'll] ever need." -- Mother Earth News, Feb.-Mar. 2019
 
"Should become THE book for soapmaking. . . . It's about time someone wrote a book like this. Most are idealistic and inaccurate. This book has a wonderful common sense approach that is SO long overdue. . . . I can recommend it with 100% confidence." -- Susan Kennedy, Oregon Trail Soaps, Rogue River, Oregon
 
"Smart it is . . . . A simple, no-nonsense book that cuts through the curmudgery of stifling soap bibles like no other." -- Shellie Humphries, Harstine Island, Washington
 
"A great book for beginners, with clear and easy instructions." -- Anne-Marie Faiola, Bramble Berry Inc., Bellingham, Washington
 
"I learned more from Smart Soapmaking than from any other soaping book, and I have read quite a few. . . . It's written with the average person in mind, not a chemistry major. Directions are very simple and easy to understand. It really takes the mystery out of making soap." -- Jackie Pack, Stuart, Virginia
 
"Groundbreaking . . . . Anne L. Watson [is the] universally respected and loved author/crafter/curator of this lost art for thousands of aspiring soapers . . . . Unquestionably the best book with which to begin. To be precise, it's probably the most accessible, most reader-friendly, and most immediately useful container of information a first-time soapmaker could hope to find." -- Wishing Willow (blog)
 
"BRILLIANT to find the recipes are in grams as well as ounces." -- Jude Birch, Aussie Soap Supplies, Bicton, West Australia
 
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shepard Publications
• Release date: Mar 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781620352021

Book preview

SMART SOAPMAKING

The Simple Guide to Making Soap Quickly, Safely, and Reliably, or How to Make Soap That’s Perfect for You, Your Family, or Friends

By Anne L. Watson

Illustrated by Wendy Edelson

Shepard Publications

Bellingham, Washington

Text copyright © 2007, 2013, 2016, 2018, 2019 by Anne L. Watson

Illustrations copyright © 2007, 2013, 2016 by Shepard Publications

Ebook Version 1.9.2

Anne L. Watson is the first author to have introduced modern techniques of home soapmaking and lotionmaking to book readers. She has made soap under the company name Soap Tree, and before her retirement from professional life, she was a historic preservation architecture consultant. Anne and her husband, Aaron Shepard, live in Bellingham, Washington.

Soap & Lotion Books

Smart Soapmaking ~ Milk Soapmaking ~ Smart Lotionmaking ~ Castile Soapmaking ~ Cool Soapmaking

Cookbooks

Baking with Cookie Molds~ Cookie Molds Around the Year

Homemaking

Smart Housekeeping ~ Smart Housekeeping Around the Year

Lifestyle

Living Apart Together

Novels

Skeeter: A Cat Tale ~ Pacific Avenue ~ Joy ~ Flight ~ Cassie’s Castaways ~ Willow’s Crystal ~ Benecia’s Mirror ~ A Chambered Nautilus ~ Departure

Children’s Books

Katie Mouse and the Perfect Wedding ~ Katie Mouse and the Christmas Door ~ The Secret of Gingerbread Village ~ Skeeter and the Weasels (illustrator)

For updates and more resources,

visit Anne’s Soapmaking Page at

www.annelwatson.com/‌soapmaking

For Aaron

A Few First Thoughts

Make soap when the moon is waning, or it will be harsh.

You have to stir soap clockwise, or it won’t set.

Soap has to be stirred with a sassafras stick.

You probably wouldn’t believe any of these old superstitions. But soapmaking instructions today can be almost as illogical. They make the process seem complicated and difficult. They make it look terribly dangerous.

It isn’t.

Maybe you’re like some of my students. Until they took my class, they were afraid to try soapmaking. I love it when the class is finished and they say, "Well, of all things — is that all there is to it?"

Or maybe you’ve made soap, but you wonder if everything you learned to do is really necessary. If there’s a simpler way, you’d sure like to know.

In either case, I’ve been in your shoes. I started out afraid to try soapmaking, and then a friend taught me how. But for a long time I believed a lot of old wives’ tales about it. I did some things that now seem as silly to me as any of the superstitions I quote above.

When I began to suspect that some of what I’d learned was nonsense, I decided to find out what was true and what wasn’t. So I started asking people, and nagging people, and trading soap for technical information. I barged around the Internet and bugged librarians and teachers. I studied soapmaking books, watched a video, and even learned computer programs, all to see what different people had to say about the things I wanted to know. Good thing I’m a grownup — if I were a kid, people would have told me I was a pest. As it was, they probably just thought it.

When I couldn’t get answers any other way, I experimented on my own. What will happen if I don’t follow this rule? Sometimes, nothing. Bye-bye, rule. More often, though, I found that techniques useful for babying particular recipes had been cast as rules to apply to all. In this book, I tell you when you’re likely to need such techniques and when you can skip them.

One of the main things that I learned was to not blindly accept what I was told. Short of sticking my finger into a lye solution to see if it really would burn me — and don’t you do that, either — I tested nearly everything. So, unlike some soapmaking books, this one isn’t based on handed-down information. It’s based on things I’ve tried. Once in a while, I do accept someone’s word for something, but when I do, I’ve been careful to say so.

On the other hand, I’m not equipped to run a testing lab. I’m certain of my results for the recipes and batch sizes I’ve worked with. Other ingredients or quantities may give different results. So, go by the book at first, then experiment further if you like.

Or skip the experimenting and just make soap.

Superstitions Galore!

Myths about Soap and Soapmaking

This is not the beginning of the book. If it opened here automatically, please page backward for important information.

There are a great many misconceptions about soapmaking. Let’s take time to dispel some of them, starting with a few that make people afraid to make soap.

Myths That Scare You Away

Myth #1: Soapmaking is difficult.

I stirred that pot for two days, and I never did get it to make soap.

When I was fairly new to making soap, I joined a couple of Internet mailing lists for soapmakers. The messages included lots of Help! emails from people who had been stirring a batch for hours or days and couldn’t make it work.

I wondered how they did it. How do you get a batch of soap to fail? I couldn’t think of a polite way to ask.

Years later, I posed this question to a group of experienced soapmakers. They agreed that by far the most common cause of Help! emails is that new soapmakers try to design their own recipes before they know how. Making soap and designing recipes

Reviews for Smart Soapmaking

[marycnweke · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The best book you need to read about soap. The details are well explained.#1